If Harper is Bush, then Ignatieff is John Kerry

Maybe this time he means it. For months, Michael Ignatieff has been threatening to topple the Tory government. In June, he came close – or made it sound like he had come close – to causing an election, only to pull back. On Tuesday, he returned to his brinkmanship.

Maybe this time he means it. For months, Michael Ignatieff has been threatening to topple the Tory government. In June, he came close – or made it sound like he had come close – to causing an election, only to pull back. On Tuesday, he returned to his brinkmanship.

To which Stephen Harper offered a perfect, albeit self-serving, response: political games and instability couldn't possibly be good for the economy. Besides, who but the Liberals, with their sense of entitlement to power, would want a fourth election in five years?

It turns out that the NDP or the Bloc Québécois may prop up the Tories, something the Liberals should have anticipated.

If they didn't, they are living in la-la land. If they did, Ignatieff's posturing makes even less sense than it has for the past few months.

According to the Liberal brain trust, what there is of it, his latest huffing and puffing were a curtain raiser to the Sept. 14 return of Parliament. There they would pummel Harper, setting the stage for an election they'd win.

First, there may be no election. If there were to be one, attention would quickly shift to whatever alternative vision Ignatieff would be offering Canadians. So far, he has offered only well-worn clichés ("strengthen east-west ties") or boilerplate blather:

"It's tough out there in Canada." "We'll turn this crisis into an opportunity." "We can dare to dream, dream to act." "We are more than the sum of its (Canada's) parts."

At times, he has sounded phoney ("I like the smell" of barn manure). Or pompous ("I made it perfectly clear"). Or arrogant ("I don't take lessons in legitimacy from Stephen Harper"). Or imperious ("Mr. Harper, your time's up").

Beyond style, Ignatieff has failed on matters of substance as well.

He has offered only generalities (improving health care, protecting the vulnerable, creating jobs and restoring public finances), or the dithering of "on-the-one-hand and on-the-other," without ever coming to a conclusion. And on his most comprehensive proposal, reforming EI, he failed to follow through, allowing Harper to dismiss it as unaffordable.

Accused of being missing in action in the summer, Ignatieff said he had logged "50,000 miles" (kilometres in Canada, Michael, kilometres).

The issue is not that he has not done the rubber chicken circuit or not consumed enough burgers at barbecues but rather that he has yet to say anything to stir Canadians.

The explanation may lie in who he is. His specialty is not domestic politics but foreign policy, on which he's on the wrong side of Canadians (having backed both the Afghan and Iraq wars, "coercive interrogation," excessive executive power, American imperialism, etc.).

He is like John Kerry in 2004, unable to shed the burden of having backed George W. Bush. Given the clarity of Canadians on much of post-9/11 politics, Ignatieff is even less likely to win as Harper Lite than Kerry could as Bush Lite.

This is made all the more relevant given the many domestic implications of the war on terror.

Ignatieff was mostly mute during the controversy over Suaad Hagi Mohamud. Her lawyer, Raoul Boulakia, told me that the Liberals under Ignatieff have been reluctant to touch any case that might turn out to be unpopular. "Once they hear the word security, they run for cover. They don't want to touch it."

That was precisely the problem with Kerry Democrats – cowed into silence on key issues when Americans were beginning to crave principled stands.

So we end up with the irony that while Barack Obama is Canadianizing America – health care, human rights, civil liberties, etc. – Harper is stuck in Bush's policies, and the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada cannot articulate a vision of Canada in tune with the times.

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